Idioma

 

December 1^st will go down in history books as the day the PRI (Revolutionary Institutional Party) returned to power.  It will surely be considered a special chapter, since no one imagined that most criticized and demonized Mexican political party of them all, a party eulogized by poet Mario Vargas Llosa as “the perfect dictatorship”, had a snowball’s chance in hell of regaining the Presidency of the Republic.

The PRI has once again gotten into office, but its return is being highly scrutinized by the Mexican public.  The “sinister” history woven around a political party that stayed in power for more than seventy years, has had a lasting effect on the consciousness of the average Mexican.  There will be no honeymoon period for this presidential term.  Voters have the mentality that this historical party has been granted a second chance to return to power, even considering its questionable past; no mistakes can be made.

Whether or not this is fair for the PRI, this is their reality.  What is highly unfair is that nobody has bothered to give a catch-phrase to or weave horror stories about the PAN’s (National Action Party) two six-year presidential terms, a period of time characterized by a brutal increase in corruption and by drug lords entering into the highest levels of power in the country.

Enrique Pena Nieto has an even more important task ahead of him than that of running a government: he needs to rebuild a nation.  He is taking over a country that has seen its economy paralyzed, its institutions eaten away from within and its society debased and in a state of moral degradation.

Unlike Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon, who didn’t understand their historical circumstances, Pena Nieto knows that he can’t just be another government official or just one more administrator in the fragmented mess that this country has become.

For Pena Nieto, his mission is clear: get everyone on board to put the pieces back together.

That is why he has made a proposal to the three main political forces in the country to sign a “Pact for Mexico”, that seeks to facilitate bilateral agreements.

The question is whether the PAN and PRD (Revolutionary Democratic Party) are going to accept it or not.  Although the PAN’s president optimistically compared this pact to the Moncloa one, it is certain that there are negative factors that will play a role in the possible derailment of the different political parties’ coming to an agreement.

On the one hand, there is the sanctioned, Lopez Obrador-style violence that still goes on inside the PRD.  Perhaps Pena Nieto’s government will have to wait until the Revolutionary Democratic Party is free from “functional PRD members”, as Jesus Zambrano called them, to be able to negotiate with a more mature left-wing that would place the interests of the country above their own fanaticism, hatred and internal doctrines.

It was precisely the leadership crisis which exists inside this party, a party in which its members do not trust in their own leader’s capacity to negotiate and whom they treat like a dog, that led it to not sign a national pact in Queretaro.

On the other hand, another type of schism exists.  The PAN is divided into those who adamantly support Calderon and those who oppose the ex-president.  Which group will Pena Nieto choose to sit down and work with? Will he choose Calderon’s purest disciples or those who consider him to be a traitor for having turned his back on Josefina Vazquez Mota?

Disagreements inside the right-wing are more than evident.  At the same time that Gustavo Madero was praising the possibility of making a pact, National Action senators were accusing the PRI of political persecution for conducting several “witch-hunts” in government Secretariats.

Would this entail more persecution and more deaths than what happened during the last presidential term?  Perhaps all the extra autonomy that the Secretariat of Public Security enjoyed during this time wasn’t good enough for Genaro Garcia Luna, who let blood be shed all over the country amidst an ambiance of absolute impunity?

In his most recent book, Fernando Savater says: “The fact that we have different opinions is not the problem. The problem is finding out which opinion lies closest to the truth, because the truth is what is best for us all”.